Mountainside

I think I must be a mistake.

A glitch in the system, an anomaly. I don’t think I am supposed to remember, but I do. Not always, not everything… although, how could I really know what I might have forgotten? There must be others like me, I’m sure of it. But it’s not something that’s spoken of, it is only felt.

Sometimes the memories I have are fainter, blurred, like an old painting faded from the sun over years and years on the turning earth. Sometimes I feel that they come as impressions of something that has not yet been, though I can’t be sure. All I know is that I remember. It is a joy, a burden, a shocking freedom, a wonder that I have this gift of knowing. Knowing how we’ve always been, and will always continue on.

I am a part of Life. I am a part of the Everywhere.

I was born on the side of a mountain long ago; the first thing I knew was the sun. It was blinding as I broke through to earthside, and I drank it in, gloriously, greedily, with a feeling of never having known such divine sustenance. That golden light, it spilled across the valley, a harsh gorge below, terrifying and deep and beautiful.

The moment I was born I knew I was lucky. I stared in wonder as a great flock of pink and grey galah took flight and slipped through an impossibly blue sky, the screeching white cockatoo swooped from tall dry branches, and the laughing kookaburra, the warble of a magpie. The trickle of a creek somewhere nearby, the slither and scuffle of creatures all around me; all of them there to greet me that first day, welcoming me to our mountainside, our valley, in the warmth of late spring.

Though I had no eyes, no ears, I saw and heard everything, and I grew and grew. I became taller than everyone around me, my body strong and smooth, slowly becoming chiselled and lined from the ways of ants and grubs, small creatures finding their homes, passing through, in all their various forms at that moment in time. We were in harmony then. A sweet and beautiful existence, through day and night, storm and sunshine, rain and wind and frost.

I felt the pounding energy of the earth that held me, connected with my elders nearby, entwined together with complex systems deep beneath the surface. Until those around me became old and withered and eventually left our hillside, and I saw the many newer forms be born, embrace the sunlight and grow up tall just as I had done. Until my own body became wrinkled, scorched and gnarled, and I started to feel weary. Centuries had passed there on that beloved mountainside and I grew sad. I wasn’t sure I felt quite ready to leave it, the vibrant buzz of that magnificent part of earth so full of life and love and sun.

But then somehow, something in me knew. I would be back again. I didn’t know what journey would come next, on the other side, beyond this form. But I took my final breath there peacefully, trusting in the energy of life beyond form, the energy that was me, connected to all things, eternal, Everywhere.